Tyler Perry’s ‘Beauty in Black’ Renewed for Season 2: Fans React with Excitement and Debate
After the second part of the first season of ‘Beauty in Black’ premiered on Netflix on March 6, 2025, Tyler Perry announced that the series would be renewed for a second season. He shared the good news on Instagram with the message: “You asked. We delivered. Season 2 coming soon.”
The audience response to the announcement was overwhelmingly positive. Many fans expressed excitement and anticipation for the next season, with comments such as: “TYLER PERRY, I JUST WANT TO SAY THIS IS YOUR BEST WORK TO DATE,” and “Uncle Tyler, when is ‘soon’????”
However, not all responses were positive. Some viewers felt that the series lacked depth and used too much drama. “His stuff is like afternoon soap operas,” one viewer commented. “He knows his audience. They love him.”
Beauty in Black is a new Netflix series whose main purpose is to drive subscriptions. The eight one-hour episodes are written, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry, a billionaire who measures the success of his streaming films and TV shows by that score.
On paper, Beauty in Black is the story of two women “living very different lives.” Kimmie (Taylor Polidore Williams) is a kind-hearted prostitute with dreams of becoming an aesthetician. Mallory (Crystle Stewart) is the face of a beauty empire and the overseer of the dark underworld Kimmie is tied to. On screen, the show is proudly explicit and deliberately explicit—Perry’s first TV-MA rating. Ten minutes into the first episode, we’re dropped into a strip club. Perry pushes women as they wiggle their bare breasts and butts and men as they leave the backs of their panties dangling. Not long after, we see Kimmie’s best friend (Amber Reign Smith) almost die from a botched butt lift. A few scenes later, we see Kimmie being raped by a VIP client—Mallory’s husband. The episode ends with a jogger being run over. Madea’s family reunion, this is not it.
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You’d have to be blind not to see the drama here. Over the past decade, Tubi, a free streaming service, has emerged as a digital media powerhouse by providing black audiences with rough gems like The Dirty D, a sprawling series centered on a Detroit strip club, or The Rapper Who Got Shot in the Heel, a parody of the Megan Thee Stallion-Tory Lanez affair. These amateur writers operate entirely outside the Hollywood system, funding their passion projects with their own money while creating work that ranges from bad to so good that it’s hard to see these people actually trying to do anything here. It’s only a matter of time before Perry comes along to steal their lunch.
But while those Tubi projects gave audiences at least one character to invest in, if not root for, Beauty in Black can’t make the same offer. Kimmie, we are constantly told, is a jerk and bad at her job — and to be honest, she doesn’t help push back against these criticisms at first. Given the plot, you’d expect to see a glimpse of the warrior who eventually turns the tables. Instead, we get that detail from her best friend as she lies in the hospital with her botched surgery. Everyone in this world is objectively mean and bad; even Mallory is a bitch on wheels, extreme even for a typically one-dimensional Perry character. But what makes these characters particularly evil is how they spend hours dragging out set-ups that don’t deliver the promised payoff or get written off entirely. They talk and talk, these characters.
In one scene, a character argues with another about how to adjust his smartphone settings. In another, Kimmie’s boss (Charles Malik Whitfield) – who somehow finds time to oversee security for Mallory’s family business while also running a strip club – tries to run over and kill Kimmie with his Range Rover, blowing up the stack of pills when the car’s security guards intervene. It would have been hilarious if the Top Gear team hadn’t thought of that first. One thing Beauty in the Black has going for it is high production values. Some of the locations are so stunning in their pastoral beauty, you could almost forget that this is supposed to be a show set in Chicago.
Over the years, Perry has gone to great lengths to gain the support of Christian audiences, from his early church plays to his current work on screen. But he’s likely to lose some fans here. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t bother showing off his range. (George Miller directed the Mad Max trilogy and Happy Feet. Spike Lee shot the commercials.) Or that Beauty in Black’s adult content stands out among Netflix’s porno offerings. It’s odd that the guy who made old ladies in church giggle is exploring his kinky side—especially as Hollywood faces a series of sexual abuse scandals stemming from its smut culture.
Write what you know, they say. In Beauty in the Black, Perry shows that he’ll do anything to make money. The kinky era of Madea can’t be far behind.
The first look at Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black has arrived.
On Tuesday, September 24, Netflix dropped the first trailer for the acclaimed director’s latest series.
The action-packed trailer begins with Mallory (Crystle Stewart) walking out of a lavish mansion. She makes impressive gestures throughout the video as if she’s addressing an all-female audience. She certainly gets Kimmie (Taylor Polidore Williams) excited as Kimmie walks through a large location and points out, “Her family owns all this stuff. Wonder what her life is like.”
“I bet she’s not staying in a pay-per-week hotel,” a friend of Kimmie’s jokes.
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Crystle Stewart plays Mallory in episode 105 of ‘Beauty in Black.’
While Kimmie and Mallory’s worlds couldn’t be more different, they soon collide in the explosive trailer, in which one gets slapped and the other appears to be hit by a truck.
A character sums it up by saying, “Beautiful and deadly,” to which Mallory replies, “Beauty in black, baby.”
According to the official synopsis, the series “follows two women whose lives are very different. While Kimmie struggles to make ends meet after being kicked out of her home by her mother, and Mallory runs a successful business, they find themselves drawn into each other’s lives.”
Ursula O. Robinson as Delinda, Tamera ‘Tee’ Kissen as Body in episode 104 of ‘Beauty in Black.’ Calvin Ashford/Netflix
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Along with Williams and Stewart, Beauty in Black also stars Amber Reign Smith as Rain, Ricco Ross as Horace, Debbi Morgan as Olivia, Richard Lawson as Norman and Steven G. Norfleet as Charles.
The main cast includes: Julian Horton as Roy, Terrell Carter as Varney, Shannon Wallace as Calvin, Bryan Tanaka as Officer Alex, Joy Rovaris as Gillian, Xavier Smalls as Angel, Charles Malik Whitfield as Jules, Tamera “Tee” Kissen as Body, Ursula O. Robinson as Delinda, Ashley Versher as Lena and George Middlebrook as Officer Trackson.
Despite the mixed reviews, the renewal of ‘Beauty in Black’ for a second season shows that there’s a lot of interest and discussion on the part of the audience. Fans are now waiting for more details about the release date and content of the next season.
